We Need A Better Plan B
by Proton Star
Summary: All of their first responses are violence – except Peter, Peter tries to talk his way out of situations first. But everyone's got a breaking point.


Coming up with a plan that does not involve destroying everything in their path is pretty much what he brings to the team. Peter doesn't blame the others, it worked for them before they met each other. Peter's pretty sure that the only reason he doesn't have that as his plan A is because after he'd been picked up by Yondu it had been ten years before he was even scarier than the ship's cat.

Peter wanted it noted that the ship's cat had been a Tarkalian lizard beast that came up to most men's rib-cages. They hadn't so much chosen it as it had come on board and no-one was quite sure how to get rid of it. It did mean that there were no space weevil infestations on-board though so the whole thing was pretty much a win, even if it meant that Peter knew his place and it was way lower than that damn cat.

Drax he could understand, and Gamorra too. She'd been brought up to be Princess Kill-Everything, so that was what she was going to do. Peter sometimes hoped Rocket would help him out on the planning front because Rocket was smart-clever when he put his mind to it, but Rocket just liked seeing shit blow up, so he was always going to be more in favour of the plans where that happened.

The main reason Peter would have liked the back-up on the non-violent plans front was that sometimes, he lost it too, and they could do with having a clearer head involved than Peter who decided that the quickest way of getting his Walkman back from the space pirates who'd crossed them was a full-on death or glory raid.

Peter had tried to reason with the pirates, begged and pleaded after that didn't work because no one was above that when it mattered, but they still refused to give him back his Walkman.

Groot, the only one of them who might have had the temperament to be a Communications Officer if it hadn't been for his vocabulary problem, was making it clear that he thought that this was a stupid idea, while Drax had decided it was a fine cause to die for, which really wasn't part of Peter's plan.

"No, it's not." That was Rocket.

"We've done more stupid things," was Drax's reply.

"Name six."

But Rocket still joined the rest of them (except Groot who was universally considered to be too young to be doing this, no matter how stridently he growled 'I am Groot', and therefore got left behind to pilot their ship) on the attack.

It was a terrible, easy, fight. It couldn't not have been, they were second rate pirates, who'd only got hold of Peter's Walkman because they'd been being attacked by a whole other space fleet at the time. Even if Peter had been on his own, he could probably have beaten them, and would have tried to, even if he hadn't been sure of that. But with the others by his side, it was barely even a fight.

Peter snatched the Walkman away from the head pirate, quickly checking it for damage. There is none. He turned to the head pirate, who was looking around at the destruction caused to his ship, "you should have given it back when I asked you to."

Peter was horrified by the damage they'd caused, he'd caused really, since they'd only come here to get his Walkman back, and he didn't think he'd ever be entirely okay with it and the violence, not that the others are, they just hid it better.

All of that was part of why Peter could have done with someone else to pull him back when he was the one that went blood-crazed, 'cause he didn't want the others to do things they didn't like doing just because between them none of them could come up with a way of avoiding it. Except, now that he was calmer and reassured that nothing had happened to the Walkman, he could see that the others had done their best to minimise casualties. The pirates's ship still worked, Rocket had hit it in places that produced fun explosions but nowhere that would destroy the whole ship, and yeah, all the crew were curled up in pain but nothing that couldn't be fixed and Gamorra was good enough at what she did that had to be deliberate.

Which made Peter feel better. He knew the guys would have his back even when he's not thinking straight, and that's a comfort in their world.


End file.
